


you’re the right kind of madness.

by LLReid



Category: Bloodbound (Visual Novels)
Genre: Bad Cooking, Canon LGBTQ Character, Cooking Lessons, Domestic Bliss, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Family Fluff, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Female Character, Other, Past Abuse, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, REQUEST!!, Recovery, Romantic Fluff, Romantic Gestures, Romantic Soulmates, Same-Sex Marriage, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27201338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LLReid/pseuds/LLReid
Summary: Inspired by; Sweetest Devotion by Adele.~~~~~She wasn’t quite sure what she was thinking attempting a stir fry by herself when their dinner the night before had resulted in spaghetti being set alight. The actual noodles. Whilst they were in the pot. How it had happened, she still couldn’t say for certain, but she rationalised that a stir fry would be much easier than the vegetarian spaghetti dish they’d butchered.That was wishful thinking.Very wishful thinking, indeed.She was bad luck, ill-fated and unfortunate as the plague in the kitchen.It took her an embarrassingly long moment to stop herself from whipping out the daggers and attacking the vegetables for daring to taunt her like this. She was a princess of Egypt. A warrior. The world bent to her commands and she was to be humiliated by some uncooked vegetables and an internet recipe? Unacceptable.
Relationships: Adrian Raines/Kamilah Sayeed, Kamilah Sayeed/Anastasia Sayeed, Kamilah Sayeed/Main Character (Bloodbound)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 52





	you’re the right kind of madness.

**Author's Note:**

> PROMPT: You mentioned in one of your one shots that mc and kamilah can’t cook so what I’m asking is could you write a one shot where they attempt to cook😂

The softest smile spread across Kamilah’s face as she glanced down at her wife, who had fallen asleep curled up in the foetal position on the couch after working for close to nineteen hours straight on back-to-back Zoom meetings. She had warned her multiple times not to overwork herself but, of course, Anastasia could know no moderation in any aspect of her life. Her dedication to both her job and the vampire community had exhausted her to the point she’d experienced a psychic sensory overload, and she’d fallen asleep not long after she had threatened to slip some hemlock into her tea if she didn’t slow down — it might not have been the most moral thing in the world but it had worked.

On the other side of the floor-to-ceiling windows coated with a special glazing that protected them from the sun, the shadows of evening falling over New York were already creeping up the living room walls, inching closer. Gradually, they’d reached fully across them, holding them in the stillness that only the earliest hours of the night could bring after a long day of virtual meetings. In the hazy gloom of the eerie autumn dusk, they were silhouettes of themselves, reduced to their very essence. 

“Stubborn girl,” she muttered to the sleeping woman, bending down to kiss her temple as she pulled the cosy blanket further around her body. She tucked a long strand of her ginger hair behind her ear and trailed her fingers down her jaw, smiling adoringly at her. At the woman who’d shown her that she had forgotten that time wasn't fixed like concrete but in fact was fluid as sand, or water. That she had forgotten that even misery could end. “My foolish, stubborn girl.”

The Bloodkeeper looked tiny beneath the huge chunky knitted blanket that Serafine had made them as a wedding present. They often fell asleep under it or Kamilah would wrap her up like a burrito, just to be annoying when she wanted attention. Seeing her this way, so vulnerable, it was almost a ridiculous notion that she could kill just by looking at someone if she wished it. That she could hurl an entire cyclone’s worth of energy into the midst of her enemies and decimate entire city blocks with nothing more than a flick of her wrist. That she unofficially ruled a world of immortal warriors. That she could and would raise hell to protect those she loved. The invisible was discernible to her eyes. Ordinary vampiric abilities crumbled in her presence... yet she bowed in the presence of her own grandeur and refused to allow it to corrupt her. Her own powers, funnily enough, were the only things she’d ever bowed to.

Being careful not to disturb her, she moved from the living room to the kitchen to begin preparing something that they could eat. The fact that all of the five star restaurants they normally ordered food from were closed due to the pandemic and their private chef had fallen ill with the Coronavirus meant that they’d been struggling to feed themselves, as they were both completely incompetent in the kitchen. If Anastasia wasn’t setting something on fire then Kamilah was preparing dishes that were salmonella breeding grounds, and then they’d always just wind up drinking wine straight from the bottle on the kitchen floor with a bag of pretzels between them. They didn’t often try to cook but when they did they cooked with wine, sometimes they even added it to the food by the bottle. It was, as Anastasia often said, a whole thing.

Kamilah had been cooked for her entire life whenever she either wanted or required mortal food, so she’d never had to develop any culinary skills. In her mortal life she’d had servants who’d catered to her every whim. Then Gaius had demanded his underlings wait on them hand and foot with elaborate banquets almost every night. And since first coming to America when it was still known as ‘The New World’ she’d enjoyed restaurants or the cooking of private chefs. She couldn’t confidently do much in the kitchen besides fuck or pour a perfectly decent bowl of cereal.

She wasn’t quite sure what she was thinking attempting a stir fry by herself when their dinner the night before had resulted in spaghetti being set alight. The actual noodles. Whilst they were in the pot. How it had happened, she still couldn’t say for certain, but she rationalised that a stir fry would be much easier than the vegetarian spaghetti dish they’d butchered.

That was wishful thinking.

Very wishful thinking, indeed.

She was bad luck, ill-fated and unfortunate as the plague in the kitchen.

It took her an embarrassingly long moment to stop herself from whipping out the daggers and attacking the vegetables for daring to taunt her like this. She was a princess of Egypt. A warrior. The world bent to her commands and she was to be humiliated by some uncooked vegetables and an internet recipe? Unacceptable. 

Her dark eyes darted between her phone and the ingredients. Even being as intelligent and adaptable as she was, she couldn’t understand how they could transform into anything edible... but in a world of unlimited possibilities, there was always the possibility that there were no possibilities. Perhaps whichever mewling mortal wrote the recipe was an imbecile and this whole thing was a joke.

“What’s wrong?,” Adrian asked frantically over the FaceTime call Kamilah had initiated. He was the only one who could help her. He always said that a man of his age should be able to change a tire, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a house, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialisation was for mortals and insects, apparently. “Are you in danger? Am I in trouble for something— whatever it is, I’m sure there’s a perfectly logical explanation involving Lily getting me drunk. Where is Anastasia—“

“My wife and I are going to starve!,” she lamented, casting the food strewn across the marble island in the centre of the kitchen a withering glance and taking a long sip out of her glass of red wine. “She’s finally asleep and I’m trying to make her a nice meal to wake up to but I—“ She sighed, loathing that she had to ask anyone for help. “Help me. Please.”

Adrian nodded but knew better than to laugh at her whilst she was so frazzled. “What are you trying to make?”

“Thai satay stir fry. You know how picky she is but she usually enjoys this when we order Thai food— and this is exactly what employees are for. I don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t want to give her a stomach ache.”

“Take a deep breath,” he soothed. “Send the recipe to me and I’ll talk you through it.”

She did as she was asked without complaining and peered through to the living room where Anastasia was still sleeping. She did so much for her so she wanted this to be perfect. Anastasia’s patience and love for her was a gift she gave her daily, expecting nothing in return. She walked at her side, her gentle nature a torch to guide her footsteps off of the dark path she walked for the past two thousand years. She alone was worth swallowing her pride and admitting that there was something she wasn’t good at, for she’d only learned in recent years that only a woman who could not conquer her deficiencies felt the need to convince the world that she had none.

She was a firm believer that there was only one thing more exasperating than a wife who could cook and wouldn’t, and that was a wife who couldn’t cook and would. So she wanted this to be good. She didn’t want to transform into her own pet hate.

“Alright,” Adrian said, drawing her attention back to the phone. “It says to start cooking your noodles first. So put them in boiling water and stir them gently to separate them.”

She nodded and did just that. Keeping a light, hopeful heart. But expecting the worst.

“Whilst they’re cooking start with the peanut satay sauce. So you’re going to measure out three table spoons of crunchy peanut butter, three table spoons of sweet chilli sauce, 100mls of water, and two table spoons of soy sauce. Put them together and mix them until they’re smooth.”

Her brow furrowed. “If the peanut butter specifically has to be crunchy how the hell can the sauce be smooth? Perhaps it’s just me but the mortal who wrote this is making no sense already.”

“She just means as smooth as they can be,” he said slowly, doing his best not to laugh at Kamilah’s genuine confusion. She’d been the one who’d taught him to do everything from killing a man with his bare hands to driving a car, so it was an odd situation for them both to find themselves in. “And make sure you’re stirring the noodles every so often.”

She sighed and did as she was asked, all the while muttering about how she missed having a full palace-worth of servants to cook for her. It wasn’t often that she longed for a spit roasted goat delivered straight to her but tonight was evidently one of those nights. There wasn’t enough wine in the world to make this bearable.

“Now you’re going to heat up one table spoon of oil in the wok and while you’re waiting for it to heat a little you’re going to peel and grate your fresh root ginger.”

“I think I’m beginning to understand why mortals eat so many packaged foods. This is ridiculous,” she groaned as she pulled one of her daggers out of the pocket of her grey sweatpants. “I—“

“Kamilah, I meant with a peeler,” Adrian interjected. “You can’t use a seven hundred year old dagger to peel ginger.”

She pouted. You could not dispute the ridiculous, she had learned long ago. You could not argue reasonably with people who didn’t understand the draw of a beautifully crafted blade — but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try. “Why can’t I?”

“You—“ He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Carry on then— and why are you armed in the penthouse, might I ask? Are you expecting an ambush?”

She glared at him. “It’s called being prepared.”

“For what exactly?”

“Everything. Anything.”

In hindsight it would’ve been much easier for her to use the peeler, but she was stubborn and her pride was a funny thing; it could make what was truly worthless appear to be a treasure. She was stubborn and it’d been too long since she’d plunged her daggers into something that frustrated her. Whilst it would’ve been much more cathartic had that thing a pulse, there was something to be said about refining the ginger on her dagger and the grater.

Even though she wasn’t sure this would inspire her into cooking her wife three elaborate meals a day, when she had her mind so set on something the way her mind was set on this, there was no changing it. Despite how this was more than likely going to end, she couldn’t help but feel proud of herself for being so determined to try. She was a woman who’d lived under the thumb of a monster who’d planned her entire life for more than two thousand years, from what she should wear to who she should speak to and where she should live and the mortals she should feed on. She’d been a puppet on a string. For the vast majority of her life it had been one lump of sugar in her tea whether she liked it or not and she’d best smile even if she was dying deep inside. She’d been like a pretty show horse, and just as on pretty show horses, her abuser had meant to put blinders on her so she couldn’t look left or right but only straight ahead where he would lead. When he’d said jump, she’d asked how high, somehow without even realising exactly what had been going on or noticing the symptoms of what she could now only label as Stockholm Syndrome. So the fact that she now had the freedom to do something this simple without worrying she’d be berated or beaten or punished in a thousand twisted ways for weeks afterwards if it turned out wrong... it was oddly liberating in a way she hadn’t expected.

Her doing something like this wasn’t necessarily her changing, she rationalised. She was simply becoming more herself. Healing. Her self was now all to her. She didn’t have any need of Gaius Augustine. She was living well without him. She had crossed over to a place where she never thought she’d be. She was someone she would have never imagined. A secret. A dream. She was this, body and soul.

“Now you’re going to put your ginger, snow peas, peppers, greens, and carrots into the oil and stir fry them for two minutes,” he said.

“Only two minutes?,” she grumbled. “Brother, I’m no chef but that seems absurd— and it smells like it’s burning. Is it supposed to smell like it’s about to explode?”

“Turn the heat down.”

“But—“

“Turn the heat down,” he echoed. “And make sure you’re still stirring the noodles.”

She huffed and did as she was asked, somewhat irritated that he knew that she’d had the thing on at full heat without actually seeing the controls.

After two minutes he said, “now drain the water from the noodles and add them to your vegetables. You’re going to stir fry them over a higher heat for one or two minutes, just until the vegetables look cooked— actually just turn the camera around, I’ll tell you when they’re done.”

“You’re enjoying this far too much,” she snorted. “If you tell a soul about this call I will stab you in the eyes.”

“Oh, I plan to lord this over you for centuries. Make no mistake about that.” He let out a laugh, “like how your ran over my foot three times in one evening in November of 1898 when you were teaching me to drive.”

“That was deliberate. You were pissing me off.”

“Mhm, of course it was. I also recall you crashing into the East River—“

“That was in 1896 and I will never, ever drink that much whiskey again. From then on, it's been strictly sherry... mostly.”

“That’s why you have a driver now, isn’t it?”

She huffed indignantly. It was indeed why she now had a driver but you wouldn’t catch her admitting that. According to her wife, she may have looked like a Good At Driving Gay but she was really quite the opposite. Road rage and a need for speed made her a liability on the roads. “Driving creases my suits.”

“Driving creases your suits,” Adrian snorted. “Funny, mines are always fine.”

“Mines are five times the price of yours.”

“Okay, that looks done. Now you’re going to push it all to one side of the pan and pour your sauce into the other half,” he said. “You’re going to bring it to boil and then mix it all together. Then when you’re serving it you’ll pour it over roasted peanuts and your basil leaves.”

“And that’s it?,” she gasped.

“That’s it.” He smiled at her proudly through the phone, “you’ve cooked your first meal that you won’t get sick from — all without burning down your kitchen. Congratulations.”

She felt oddly proud of herself as she followed his instructions. It actually smelled pretty good and it definitely looked edible. This just proved to her that if your success was not on your own terms, if it looked good to the world but did not feel good in your heart, then it was not success at all.

“Thank you,” she said. “I— I appreciate the help.”

“You can buy my silence with cuban cigars and my weight in whichever whiskey got you drunk enough to crash a car into the East River. Perhaps even a new suit that amounts to five times the price of the one I’m wearing, if you’re feeling generous.”

She chuckled and flashed her middle finger at her phone before hanging up on him. It was their special way of showing affection. Whilst how much she truly loved and appreciated him was never really spoken, just because something remained unspoken didn’t mean that it disappeared or didn’t exist. The love that existed between them was one that even time had lay down and fallen still for.

A quick glance out the window and the sky had already turned purple; the lights in the buildings around theirs had appeared, suddenly, as if someone had thrown a handful of silver and gold across the edge of the world. When the late Autumn cold came to Manhattan it arrived in sheets of frost and fallen leaves. Like the wind wrapped itself around the skyscrapers and twisted in between mortals falling asleep in their beds. It shook the leaves from trees and sifted through cracks in the sidewalks. The only green things left were the Christmas trees being sold absurdly early and the old hedges in front of brownstone houses, and these were often painted white with frost. At night, the purple sky became a murky shade of midnight blue and bluer still, as a light polluted sapphire of the night.

Evidently time really did move faster when you were doing something of value.

She transferred her masterpiece onto two plates and poured two glasses of white wine to sit on the table, and even went as far as to light a candle.

“Annie. My love,” she murmured as she perched on the couch beside Anastasia, leaning over her torso to gently kiss her cheek. “It’s time to wake up.”

Anastasia whimpered and burrowed beneath the dusky pink blanket. “Nooo, Kami. I’m sleeping.”

She smirked and pressed her lips to the tiny sliver of her forehead she could still see, rubbing her hand down the length of her back. It was impossible not to laugh at her when she was so groggy. Being this adorable was a crime as far as she was concerned. The thicker accent. The fact she wanted to cuddle and do nothing else. It made her weak and she really didn’t know how she’d ever been so oblivious, this heart-attack thing she had been having since the first time she’d fallen asleep with her? It was love, that was what it felt like.

“I have a surprise for you,” she whispered in her ear. “It’s one you’ll love.”

Anastasia pulled the blanket down just enough that her eyes now peered over the edge. “Do I have to put on pants?”

“No. By all means, strip down further. I’ll certainly enjoy the view.” At that Anastasia giggled and stretched out her limbs, smiling as Kamilah pulled the blanket away from her face and stole a kiss from her lips. Then another. And another. All this kissing was making her crazy; it was reminding her time and again of what she could feel, and how it could be when you wanted someone as much as she wanted you. “Come on, it’s getting cold.”

Anastasia sat upright immediately, half suspecting that their kitchen had burned down while she was sleeping. “It’s getting cold?,” she echoed as she pulled her to her feet. “Kami, what did you do?”

“Such faith in me,” she teased. “I’ll have you know I have merely been pretending to be a terrible cook this whole time to make you feel better about your abilities.”

“I—“ She stopped talking the moment they rounded the corner into the dining room, her jaw practically hitting the floor. “Holy shit. I— You— What?”

It took a lot to drive this woman speechless. That in itself was a bigger compliment than she could’ve hoped for and she hadn’t even tasted it yet.

“I told you,” she smirked as they sat down, “I mastered the art of cooking centuries ago.”

Anastasia blinked. “You threw the toaster at the wall last week and ranted for forty-five minutes about mortals and their ‘damn cooking machines’. Your words, not mine.”

“I never said toast was one of my specialties.” She propped her chin on her hand and added, “and that was after you poured water on it whilst it was still plugged in to put out the fire. The thing was an environmental hazard.”

The Bloodkeeper giggled, shaking her head in bemusement as she twirled some noodles around her fork. Kamilah watched with bated breath as she took the first bite, glacial blue eyes widening almost immediately. “Kami!”

“Good?,” she chuckled, treating herself to a bite. It wasn’t perfect by any means... but it was pretty damn close.

“This is amazing!,” Anastasia breathed, taking another bite immediately. She wasn’t a big eater and typically had very little interest in food, to her eating was a chore and something that she did only because she had to and not necessarily because she wanted to. She was extremely picky and was averse to many textures, even something too hot or too cold could make her nauseous. She’d been that way since a choking incident as a toddler, apparently, and Kamilah had seen her spend more time playing with her food than actually eating it on so many occasions that she’d lost count. So the fact that she was so excited about this made her hold her chin a little higher. “Like, seriously amazing.”

“I’ll make it for you whenever you want.”

Anastasia started to look at her in a manner she recognised: it was the way she looked at all of her favourite books, ones she had read before, yet still surprised her with all they had to say and insights they had to offer. That gaze held the sort of beauty you felt so deeply it became contagious and somehow made you feel beautiful too. “You really are the best wife in the world.”

She winked at her. “Of course I am, darling.”

“I love you so much, Kami.”

Her ancient heart fluttered in her chest and she whispered, light as a gossamer, “As I love you.”

This was what it felt like, she thought. Peace. This was exactly what it felt like — and to think she never even believed in happiness when she’d found it. She hadn’t thought it existed. Now look at her. It was as if hope had appeared out of nowhere to settle beside her one day, to wrap her in its embrace, and it wasn't going anywhere, it wasn't going to desert her now as it had so many times before. She was ready to believe in just about anything.

~ fin.


End file.
